Marburg Virus

Marburg Virus

The Marburg virus causes severe viral haemorrhagic fever, very like Ebola, and comes with horrific mortality rates of anything from 24% to 88%.

People initially catch the disease through spending a long time in places where the bats live, for example mines and caves. African Green Monkeys can also carry it.

Once it infects a human the disease spreads person-to-person, often through nursing the sick without taking the right precautions or by disposing of their bodies unsafely.

How to stay safe from Marburg virus

There is no vaccine against Marburg, nor is there any antiviral treatment. All the medical profession can do is treat the symptoms. Which makes it really important, if you’re travelling to a country where Marburg is common, to know what to look out for and how to stay safe.

Symptoms of Marburg fever

Things start quickly and dramatically: a fever, serious headaches and weakness, often accompanied by muscle pain

On the third day patients often experience very bad watery diarrhoea, abdominal pain, cramps and vomiting. This can carry on for a week

The disease soon affects the way you look: ghost-like and drawn with deep-set eyes and an expressionless face

Many people then develop severe haemorrhagic bleeding, with blood in the vomit and faeces as well as from the nose, gums and vagina

At the acute stage patients have a very high fever. Central nervous system issues can lead to confusion, anger and aggression

In fatal cases, death comes 8 – 9 days after the symptoms start, usually because of severe blood loss and shock

Marburg fever diagnosis

Similar to Lassa Fever, Marburg can look very like malaria, typhoid, shigellosis, cholera, leptospirosis, plague, rickettsiosis, relapsing fever, meningitis, hepatitis and all sorts of other unpleasant viral haemorrhagic fevers. This means the only way to tell for sure is by sending samples to a lab, where they’ll carry out the same tests as for Lassa fever:

The antibody enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay

Tests to detect antigens

A reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction test

Isolating the virus in a cell culture

Marburg fever vaccine and treatment

There is no vaccine – doctors simply treat the symptoms

Several promising experimental vaccines are being tested, but they’re still years away